For nearly two decades, Barbara Garnaus maintained a modest, delicate life balance: keeping her part-time Orange County school district job and juggling her bills and credit card debt. Now 63, living alone, she counts every dollar, has no cellphone and commutes an hour in traffic so she can keep an affordable apartment in Laguna Woods. Having good health helped. Garnaus got by without medical insurance, relying on yearly exams at a free clinic. But that changed last year: Garnaus now needs treatment for cancer, and she bought insurance under Obamacare.

Twenty-five years after scientists first identified the hepatitis C virus, doctors are declaring victory over an infection that afflicts more than 3 million Americans and kills more of them than HIV. In a series of clinical trial results, a new generation of antiviral medications was able to clear the liver-ravaging virus from virtually all patients' bloodstreams in as little as eight weeks. Even in patients with the most stubborn infections, the new drugs were capable of suppressing the virus completely at rates well over 90%. The treatments, however, come with a steep price tag. The "sustained virologic responses" reported in the trials typically mean an infection has been permanently cleared.

FRENCH CAMP, Calif. - California's $840-million medical prison - the largest in the nation - was built to provide care to more than 1,800 inmates. When fully operational, it was supposed to help the state's prison system emerge from a decade of federal oversight brought on by the persistent neglect and poor medical treatment of inmates. But since opening in July, the state-of-the-art California Health Care Facility has been beset by waste, mismanagement and miscommunication between the prison and medical staffs.

Are the millions of dollars spent to try to reverse childhood obesity a good investment? One answer might be found in the cost if the condition goes unchecked: about $19,000 per obese child in lifetime medical costs, researchers reported Monday. That's $14 billion just for the obese 10-year-olds in the United States, according to researchers at the Duke Global Health Institute and the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore. They reported their results in the journal Pediatrics.

Reginald Clarke is someone Obamacare was designed to help. The 55-year-old, who was homeless for a time, now has an apartment in Gardena and a street-cleaning job that pays him $14,000 a year. He hadn't visited a doctor in four or five years. Then, last fall, his girlfriend told him he would be eligible for Medi-Cal starting Jan. 1. "I was excited. I could go get a physical," he said. "There are a few things I need. " But joy turned to exasperation when Clarke's application, filed in December, was mistakenly rejected - and then seemed to disappear from county and state computer systems.

Los Angeles County officials said Thursday that 170,200 additional victims have been identified in a theft of medical data from a county contractor's office. The total number of county patients affected now stands at 338,700. The data was stored on eight computers taken in a February break-in at the Torrance office of Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, a company that handles medical billing and collections. The computers contained data that included patients' first and last names, Social Security numbers and certain medical and billing information.

After Maria de Jesus Arroyo was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest in the summer of 2010, her husband and children said their goodbyes and left her in the hands of hospital staff. When they saw her next at the funeral, her nose was broken and she had gashes and bruises on her face - injuries too severe to be covered up, despite the morticians' best efforts. The outraged family sued the hospital, White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, believing the hospital had mishandled the 80-year-old woman's body.

More than 450 medical marijuana shops have filed renewals to pay Los Angeles business taxes this year - more than three times as many as are allowed to stay open under Proposition D. The new numbers won't settle the debate over how many medical marijuana businesses are now operating in Los Angeles. Additional pot shops may be open but have fallen delinquent on their taxes. Some may have never registered to pay taxes at all. But the numbers provide the latest hint at what has happened since Los Angeles voters passed new rules attempting to restrict medical marijuana shops.

A patient who claims she was sexually assaulted by a nursing assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center while she was heavily medicated described a feeling of helplessness when the alleged crime occurred. "It's devastating," she said, to be victimized "when you're incapacitated and not yourself and weak and scared. " The Times generally does not name alleged victims in sex crime cases. Authorities are now investigating allegations the nursing assistant, who has since been fired, sexually assaulted two patients while they were heavily medicated and too weak to resist, according to court records and interviews.

Healthcare advocates Tuesday urged the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to set aside at least $11 million in additional funding for free medical services for low-income residents - including immigrants lacking legal status - who remain uninsured under Obamacare. Members of the faith-based coalition One L.A., labor groups and community healthcare organizations told reporters and board members that failing to expand a county program to serve thousands more poor and undocumented residents would endanger public health.